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QuartzCrystal: Offline Rendering

Unlike the Quartz Composer Editor, QuartzCrystal does not render your compositions in realtime --- it is an offline renderer.

With QuartzCrystal, each frame is rendered with the Composition Time set to the exact split-second interval at which the frame should occur, as determined by the "Framerate" setting --- even though each frame may take much longer than that to render.

Because of this, Quartz Composer Patches that rely on realtime input, such as the "FPS Display", may act strangely. See this thread for example.

The frames are then sequentially stored in either a QuickTime Movie or an Image Sequence. For QuickTime Movies, the framerate is set to the exact value you specify --- resulting in smooth, consistent playback.